Note: AVAHA products are made in the Occupied West Bank and thus are legit target of BDS action.

Boycott-Divest-Sanction Action against AVAHA products

Des reports:

After leaving the Gaza Report event, Dina, Stephanie and I returned to Natural Body Spa & Shoppe to do our Boycott, Divestment and Sanction solidarity action for “Land Day”, the annual day of commemoration for Palestinians.

We were joined by Andy (our videographer) and Steve (Palestine Children’s Relief Fund) who had with him his two daughters and two children from Gaza, for whom Steve had received medical treatment at John Hopkins. There we delivered our message about AHAVA and its violation of international law. Note that this was our 4th visit to the store and that the owner, Bart Yablonsky even replied via email last August saying, “Thank you for the information.”

After explaining why we were shocked at still finding the products there we started chanting and scooping them off their prominent display stacking them onto the counter, “Don’t you know, AHAVA has got to go!” The staff reacted in a variety of ways. Some were receptive to our message, “As a person who cares about education, I understand your passion” and “I did not know that. Good to know.” Some seemed shocked or displayed defensive body language (mouths open, arms crossed). One became overwrought screaming “I’m Jewish and I don’t even use this shit. I don’t like AHAVA!”… See More… Ver mais

When told we shouldn’t do this in front of our kids, we explained that these kids were here for treatment after being shot by Israeli soldiers and that they were exactly why we were doing this and knew all about it. Diminutive Daoud took off his knit hat and showed his misshapen, severely scarred skull.

By then mall security had been called and asked us to leave. As we exited the shop to streetside we stopped on the sidewalk to take pictures of the banner and our signs in front of the store. Mall security claimed that the sidewalk was private property. Eventhough we were already leaving, the salesperson who did all the screaming at us followed outside with other staff to block our vehicle, “You’ve been filming me and taking my picture. You’re not leaving here until I get that tape and your camera! Do you know how I feel?? You’ve ruined my day!”

Once the police officers arrived the staff seemingly disappeared. Officers approached us to ask what was going on. We explained that we were exercising our right to free speech, demonstrating at this store because it carries a product that violates international law, profiting from the occupation of Palestine. “Oh, it’s an Israel – Palestine issue.” said one officer, “I just wanted to understand what it was about.”

After checking with his colleague about the cameras he shook his head and amicably enough informed us that Arlington police were the most liberal and as far as he knew there wasn’t any regulation preventing us from taking pictures and filming. We were free to demonstrate on the sidewalk as long as we didn’t block traffic but the store wanted us banned from the mall. “Are we being detained, officer?” we asked. He replied that yes, since the mall wanted to ban us we would need to sign the form to ensure that we not return. We told the officer that we don’t even come to the mall, did not want to sign any form, and that we were leaving as asked when the staff blocked our vehicle. At this point the police realized we didn’t need to be detained, but pointed out that if the saleswoman was being stalked by someone and her whereabouts found online due to our video we could be liable. We promised that we have remarkable editing skills and there was no need to worry. We smiled, thanked the officers, shaked their hands and departed the premises.

Note: the AHAVA products had been taken to the back of the store. : )
a few seconds ago ·

And if you donate $100 or more, we’ll send you a copy of In the Shadow of Power – this poignant and haunting collection of photographs of the other Washington, D.C. – with an introduction by Ralph Nader.

And we’ll send you a copy of In Pursuit of Justice – the classic collection of columns by Ralph Nader.

Jean Daniel (né Jean Daniel Bensaid) was born in Algeria in 1920. He became a journalist in France and worked for L’ Express, a left-wing magazine.

On 24th October, 1963, Ben Bradlee of Newsweek arranged for Daniel to meet President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy knew that Daniel was just about to visit Cuba in order to interview Fidel Castro. In an article in the New Republic, Daniel claims that Kennedy asked him to pass on a message to Castro:

“I believe that there is no country in the world, including the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime. I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America. The great aim of the Alliance for Progress is to reverse this unfortunate policy. This is one of the most, if not the most, important problems in America foreign policy. I can assure you that I have understood the Cubans. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries.”

John F. Kennedy went onto to tell Daniel: “We can’t let Communist subversion win in the other Latin American countries. Two dikes are needed to contain Soviet expansion: the blockade on the one hand, a tremendous effort toward progress on the other. This is the problem in a nutshell. Both battles are equally difficult… The continuation of the blockade depends on the continuation of subversive activities.”

Daniel later wrote: “I did not really wish to suggest anything, since I had never been to Cuba and, on the other hand, I had heard from all sides tales of the privations the Cuban people were suffering owing to their isolated economic situation. But I could see plainly that John Kennedy had doubts, and was seeking a way out.”

Daniel met Fidel Castro on 19th November, 1963. Daniel later described Castro as listening with “devouring and passionate interest”. He made Daniel repeat three times Kennedy’s indictment of Fulgencio Batista. Castro told Daniel that Kennedy could become “the greatest president of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas.”

Daniel was with Castro when news arrived that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated Castro turned to Daniel and said:”This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed.” Later Castro commented: “Now they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly, otherwise, you watch and see, I know them, they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.”

Castro went on to discuss the use of assassination as a political weapon. In the late 1950s e had rejected the idea of assassinating Fulgencio Batista. “I have always been violently opposed to such methods. First of all from the viewpoint of political self-interest, because so far as Cuba is concerned, if Batista had been killed he would have been replaced by some military figure who would have tried to make the revolutionists pay for the martyrdom of the dictator. But I was also opposed to it on personal grounds; assassination is repellent to me.”

With the help of Jean Daniel, Thomas G. Buchananpublished his book, Who Killed Kennedy? , in May 1964. Buchanan appears to have been the first writer to suggest that Lyndon B. Johnson and “Texas oil interests” were responsible for Kennedy’s death. Buchanan argues that the assassination was funded by a Texas oilman. He does not name him but later it emerged he was referring to Haroldson L. Hunt.

Fidel Castro: Fidel Castro says his country is in desperate shape and can only be rescued by a revolutionary government.

Cuba’s land situation, the problems of industrialization, living standards, unemployment, education and public health: these are the problems—along with the attainment of civil liberty and political democracy—to the solution of which the revolutionary 26th of July Movement directs its efforts.

This presentation may seem cold and theoretical to the reader, unless he is familiar with the fearful tragedy which our country is living through.

At least 85 percent of Cuba’s small-scale farmers rent their land, and face the constant threat of eviction. More than half of our best arable land is in foreign hands; in Oriente, the broadest province of Cuba, the lands of The United Fruit Company and of the West Indies Fruit Company unite our northern and southern shores. Throughout the country, 200,000 rural families are without a square foot of land on which they can support themselves; yet almost ten million acres of untouched arable land remain in the hands of powerful interests. Cuba is primarily an agricultural country. The rural areas were the cradle of our independence; the prosperity and greatness of our nation depend on a healthy and vigorous rural population, willing and able to till the soil, and on a state which protects and guides that population. If this is so, how can the present situation be allowed to continue?

Except for a few food-producing industries and some woodworking and textile plants, Cuba is essentially a producer of raw materials. She exports sugar and imports candy; she exports leather and imports shoes; she exports iron and imports plows. Everyone agrees that there is a great need to industrialize: that we lack metal, paper and chemical industries; that the techniques of agriculture and animal husbandry must be improved; that our food-producing industries must be expanded to meet the ruinous competition of European cheese, condensed milk, liquors and cooking oil, and of American canned foods; that we need a merchant fleet; that the tourist trade is a potential source of great income. But the possessors of capital keep the people bowed under ox-yokes, the state folds its arms, and industrialization will wait for kingdom come.

As bad, or worse, is the tragedy of our housing situation. There are about 200,000 huts and shacks in Cuba; 400,000 rural and urban families live crowded in slums without the barest necessities of sanitation. Some 2,200,000 Cubans pay rents which absorb from one-fifth to one-third of their incomes, and 2,800,000 of our rural and suburban population are without electricity. In this matter we are blocked in the same way: if the state proposes a reduction in rent, the proprietors threaten to paralyze construction; if the state does nothing, the owners build only so long as they can foresee high rents. The electric-power monopoly acts the same way: it extends its lines only so far as it can visualize a good profit; beyond that point, what matters if the people live in the dark? The state folds its arms and the public remains without adequate housing or light.

Our educational system is a perfect complement to the situations just described. In a country in which the farmer is not master of his land, who wants agricultural schools? In our non-industrialized cities, who needs technical and industrial schools? All this follows the same absurd logic: since we have none of one thing, there is no need for the other. Any typical small European country boasts more than 200 technical and industrial-arts schools; in Cuba there are only six—and graduates go forth with their degrees only to find that there is no work for them. Less than half of our rural children of school age can attend school; and they go barefoot, ill-clothed and ill-fed. Often the teacher must buy the necessary school supplies out of his own salary.

Only death frees people from such poverty, and in this solution the state cooperates. More than 90 percent of the children in our rural areas are infested with parasites which enter the body through bare feet. Society is greatly moved by the kidnapping or murder of a single child, but it remains criminally indifferent to the mass murder of our children through lack of proper care.

And when a father works only four months a year, as do some 500,000 sugar-workers, how can he afford medicine and proper clothing for his children? They will grow up with rickets; at thirty, will not have a sound tooth in their mouths; and having heard a million speeches, will die in poverty and disillusionment. Access to our always-crowded state hospitals is almost impossible without the recommendation of some politician, whose price is the vote of the sufferer and his family—a vote that insures the continuation of this evil.

In such conditions, is it surprising that from May to December we have more than a million unemployed, and that Cuba, with a population of 5,500,000, has more people unemployed than either France or Italy, whose populations exceed 40,000,000?

The future of the country and the solution of its problems cannot continue to depend on the selfish desires of a dozen financiers, on the cold profit-and-loss calculations of a few magnates in air-conditioned offices. The country cannot continue to beg, on bended knee, for miracles from a few “golden calves.” Cuba’s problems will only be solved if we Cubans dedicate ourselves to fight for their solution with the same energy, integrity and patriotism our liberators invested in the country’s foundation. They will not be solved by politicians who jabber unceasingly of “absolute freedom of enterprise,” the sacred “lady of supply and demand” and “guarantees of investment capital.”

A revolutionary government, with the endorsement of the nation, would rid our institutions of corrupt and mercenary bureaucrats, and proceed immediately to the industrialization of the country—mobilizing all our idle capital, which amounts to more than 1.5 billion pesos, through the National Bank and the Bank for the Promotion of Agriculture and Industry. This great task of planning and administration must be put in the hands of men of absolute competence, who are completely outside the sphere of politics.

A revolutionary government, after installing as owners of their plots the 100,000 small farmers who now rent their land, would proceed to a final settlement of the land problem. First, it would establish—as the constitution requires—a maximum size for each type of agricultural holding, expropriating the excess acreage. Thus public lands stolen from the state would be recovered, marshes and swamplands drained, areas set aside for reforestation. Second, the revolutionary government would distribute the remainder of the expropriated lands to our rural families (giving preference to the largest), sponsor the formation of agricultural cooperatives for the joint use of expensive farm machinery and refrigerated storage facilities, and provide guidance, technical knowledge and equipment for the farmer.

A revolutionary government would resolve the housing problem by resolutely lowering rents by 50 percent, exempting from taxation all houses occupied by their owners, tripling taxes on rented buildings, demolishing slums to make way for modern, many-storied buildings, and financing construction of dwellings throughout the island on an unprecedented scale. If the ideal in the country is that every family should own its parcel, the ideal in the city must be that every family lives in its own house or apartment.

We have sufficient stones and more than enough hands to create a decent residence for every family in Cuba. But if we continue to wait for miracles from “the golden calves,” a thousand years will pass and nothing will change.

Finally, a revolutionary government would proceed to the integral reform of our educational system.

Cuba can easily support a population three times what it is now. There is no reason, then, why misery should exist among its present inhabitants. The markets should be full of produce; the pantries of our homes should be well-stocked; every hand should be industriously at work. No, this is not inconceivable. What is inconceivable is that there should be men who will accept hunger while there is a square foot of land not sowed; what is inconceivable is that 30 percent of our rural folk cannot sign their names and that 90 percent know nothing of Cuban history; what is inconceivable is that the majority of our rural families live in conditions worse than those of the Indians whom Columbus found when he discovered “the most beautiful land that human eyes have seen.”